Frailty and Injury Causation

This paper reports on a study undertaken to determine whether frailty has a role in motor vehicle crash injury causation. The authors studied the association between frailty and injury among Crash Injury Research Engineering Network (CIREN) cases. The baseline “physical functioning” (PF) score of the SF-36 was used as a marker of frailty (i.e., PF score less than 75). The authors analyzed frailty association with delta V among injured (i.e., brain, rib, or femur) seat-belted occupants in frontal crashes to establish whether frailty confers a different risk of each particular injury. The study found that frailty occurred in 13.7 % of the cohort (n = 1,747). Median Injury Severity Score (ISS) was 14.0 among the frail and 17.0 among the non-frail. Frailty was significantly associated with advanced age, male gender, the presence of co-morbidities, extreme BMIs, frontal and near-side crashes and delta V less than 45 km/h. This suggests that it takes less energy to cause multiple rib fractures among frail occupants. Seat belt use and ISS less than 16 were not associated with frailty. The authors conclude that PF score, a marker of frailty, is associated with similar ISS and lower delta V and is independently linked to lower delta V thresholds for some injuries (i.e. rib fractures) but not for others (i.e. brain injuries and femur fractures).

• Record URL:
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3503423/
• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://worldcat.org/issn/19432461
• Corporate Authors:

  Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine (AAAM)

  P.O. Box 4176
  Barrington, IL  United States  60011-4176
• Authors:
  • Ryb, Gabriel E
  • Dischinger, Patricia C
  • Burch, Cynthia A
  • Kerns, Timothy J
  • Kufera, Joseph
  • Andersen, Daniel
• Conference:
  • 56th Annual Scientific Conference of the Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine
  • Location: Seattle Washington
  • Date: 2012-10-14 to 2012-10-17
• Publication Date: 2012-10

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Web
• Features: References; Tables;
• Pagination: pp 175–181
• Monograph Title: Annals of Advances in Automotive Medicine. 56th Annual Scientific Conference, Seattle, Washington, October 14-17, 2012
• Serial:
  • Annals of Advances in Automotive Medicine
  • Volume: 56
  • Publisher: Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine (AAAM)
  • ISSN: 1943-2461

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Aged; Biophysics; Crash data; Crash injuries; Delta functions; Fatalities; Fractures (Anatomy); Injury severity; Occupant kinetics; Ribs; Seat belts
• Subject Areas: Highways; Safety and Human Factors; I83: Accidents and the Human Factor; I84: Personal Injuries;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01482990
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: May 30 2013 9:11PM